Want a career in Public Health and Epidemiology...What Residency?

[Guevara M.D.]

---

Members don't see this ad.

What up SDNers...just trying to get your collective opinion on my future career plans.

As the title says, I'm a current M3 who is very interested in pursuing a career in Public Health & Epidemiology. I have always been fascinated by how diseases move through society, how our behaviors affect our health, how epidemics start and spread, the global aspect of it, etc. etc. It's perfect for me.

The problem is what to pursue residency wise. There's a residency geared towards Public Health called General & Preventive Medicine which is great but the consensus I get from doctors around me is that it's very light on clinical training and would not create a very well trained doctor. Most of them have told me that it's better to do it AFTER obtaining a residency.

So in the end I have narrowed it down to two residency choices, Family Medicine and Internal Medicine. Nearly every doctor I have met or researched that is working in Public Health was trained in one of those specialties.

The problem now is deciding which one to choose. I love Family Medicine and FM doctors. I love the passion they have, their concern for human rights and their focus on social determinants of health. I think I would be very comfortable with them. The problem is that I feel like Internal Medicine would make me a bit more competitive to work at the places I want to work at (CDC and the WHO). Plus Internal Medicine would allow me to do training in Infectious Disease which I love.

But I HATE hospitals and I'm afraid Internal Medicine training would be the LONGEST three years of my life.... :-(

Anyways, any advice?

 

[GoodmanBrown]

What up SDNers...just trying to get your collective opinion on my future career plans.

As the title says, I'm a current M3 who is very interested in pursuing a career in Public Health & Epidemiology. I have always been fascinated by how diseases move through society, how our behaviors affect our health, how epidemics start and spread, the global aspect of it, etc. etc. It's perfect for me.

The problem is what to pursue residency wise. There's a residency geared towards Public Health called General & Preventive Medicine which is great but the consensus I get from doctors around me is that it's very light on clinical training and would not create a very well trained doctor. Most of them have told me that it's better to do it AFTER obtaining a residency.

So in the end I have narrowed it down to two residency choices, Family Medicine and Internal Medicine. Nearly every doctor I have met or researched that is working in Public Health was trained in one of those specialties.

The problem now is deciding which one to choose. I love Family Medicine and FM doctors. I love the passion they have, their concern for human rights and their focus on social determinants of health. I think I would be very comfortable with them. The problem is that I feel like Internal Medicine would make me a bit more competitive to work at the places I want to work at (CDC and the WHO). Plus Internal Medicine would allow me to do training in Infectious Disease which I love.

But I HATE hospitals and I'm afraid Internal Medicine training would be the LONGEST three years of my life.... :-(

Anyways, any advice?

I think if you're interested in working at a "big shot" institution like the CDC or WHO, an ID fellowship would be a big, big help. So, you might have to suck up the 3 years of internal medicine. That said, the ID fellowship will probably have a fair amount of inpatient as well, so you'll probably have a bit more time in the hospital.

If you're interested in non-infectious disease (e.g. DM or CHF) and their implications for public health, an FM residency might work well for you. It might be harder to get a foot in the door at high powered institutions, but any med school would have a spot for you working in community health I would think.

I don't know if I added too much to what you already know, so my apologies if this leaves you where you were before.

 

[myhandsarecold]

What up SDNers...just trying to get your collective opinion on my future career plans.

As the title says, I'm a current M3 who is very interested in pursuing a career in Public Health & Epidemiology. I have always been fascinated by how diseases move through society, how our behaviors affect our health, how epidemics start and spread, the global aspect of it, etc. etc. It's perfect for me.

The problem is what to pursue residency wise. There's a residency geared towards Public Health called General & Preventive Medicine which is great but the consensus I get from doctors around me is that it's very light on clinical training and would not create a very well trained doctor. Most of them have told me that it's better to do it AFTER obtaining a residency.

So in the end I have narrowed it down to two residency choices, Family Medicine and Internal Medicine. Nearly every doctor I have met or researched that is working in Public Health was trained in one of those specialties.

The problem now is deciding which one to choose. I love Family Medicine and FM doctors. I love the passion they have, their concern for human rights and their focus on social determinants of health. I think I would be very comfortable with them. The problem is that I feel like Internal Medicine would make me a bit more competitive to work at the places I want to work at (CDC and the WHO). Plus Internal Medicine would allow me to do training in Infectious Disease which I love.

But I HATE hospitals and I'm afraid Internal Medicine training would be the LONGEST three years of my life.... :-(

Anyways, any advice?

combined preventive medicine/MPH program, duh

click here

 

[wholeheartedly]

combined preventive medicine/MPH program, duh

and in his post he explains why he's leery of that choice.

I agree that it kind of depends on what types of diseases you're interested in and what type of work you want to do at those places If you're interested in chronic diseases then Family Med should be fine. If you're more interested in ID then maybe internal medicine might be better for the ID fellowship. But to complicate things even more, you really can do Epi from other fields as well. Peds for instance, or emergency medicine would also be good choices. I have a surgery resident and a few cardiology people in my MPH program as well. There are even a few pathologists at my institution doing infectious disease epi type research.

As for getting your foot in the door at the CDC or WHO. They both have internships and fellowships for people at various stages of training. like this http://www.cdc.gov/EIS/Eligibility.html

experiences like that are probably more important than the specific residency.

 

[IlDestriero]

ID and MPH

 

[CatFactorial]

Clearly the OP should become an allergist.

/thread

 

[Nadia83]

Current CDCer (MPH, working in chronic disease) moving on to med school.

So: First of all, b/c I've looked into this - there are a few FM/PM IM/PM programs out there.
Second of all, there are IM programs that focus more on outpatient medicine.

Otherwise...

- IM + ID + PM = ??? 8 years ???? that's a long time. If you're sure you want to do ID, maybe it's worth it and it helps you keep a clinical connection. If you don't want to keep your toe in the clinical world, it might not be worth it.

- There are a lot of fields of public health outside of ID. Physicians at CDC (physicians in public health, in general) have a lot of flexibility to switch around regardless of training.

- Many folks who are in leadership positions at CDC are MDs (or PhDs) who came in through EIS (Epidemiological Investigative Service). Two years of training / work, disease detectives, pretty awesome. MPH is not required. Some came in before they finished residency, some came in after internship.

OK I think that's it 🙂

 

[alamo4]

Have you thought about Ophthalmology? It's a field where you can make a dramatic impact by restoring vision in a single surgery, and needed all over the world. Ophthalmologists due a huge amount of good in the developing world.

 

[fneverforget]

.